Brandy Muse – Shifting from Mental Health Awareness to Mental Health Action

Connect with Brandy:

• 

Connect with David:

• • 

• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

• • 

• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• How to build a mental health ERG
• Salary.com Consulting practice
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 6
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 4

• “Our [mental health] awareness is really loud, but our struggles are staying quiet.”
• “[A mental health] professional walking around the [workplace] just normalizes mental health. It shows everybody that the company values this beyond just the benefits band-aid.”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host. David Turetsky, alongside my friend, co host, partner, colleague at Salary.com, Dwight Brown. Dwight, how are you today?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:49

David Turetsky, I am doing well today. How are you doing today?

 

David Turetsky: 0:54

I'm okay. And one of the things that we're going to talk about today is what we mean by that statement. So what do we mean by how are you doing? And what does it mean when you say I'm okay? And we'll get into that in a moment. But first, we want to introduce our wonderful guest, Brandy Muse. How are you, Brandy?

 

Brandy Muse: 1:14

I'm doing quite well. Glad to be here.

 

David Turetsky: 1:16

And we're going to unpack what quite well means as well, I'm sure.

 

Brandy Muse: 1:20

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 1:21

But first, before we get started, Brandy, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

 

Brandy Muse: 1:25

So hi, I'm Brandy Muse. I'm actually, I'm a learning experience designer for Children's Hospital Colorado. I'm also a consultant and designer through my company, Muse LXD. I have master's in organizational leadership from CU Boulder and after being a teacher for a while, I focused in on business consulting and learning and development. But but in my former life, I spent the good part of 16 years at home with a husband with some children and during a lot of those years, I was not doing fine, and my experience then actually sparked a really deep passion for mental health treatment and awareness, and it's really greatly informed my studies moving forward and my career path as well. So now what I do is I advocate for mental health awareness and resources by building corporate trainings, doing some business consulting and sharing my story and insights on platforms like this one.

 

David Turetsky: 2:22

Awesome! Well, before we get going on our topic today, what's one fun thing that no one knows about Brandy?

 

Brandy Muse: 2:29

Okay, I don't think there's anything that no one knows about me. But what most of you don't know

 

David Turetsky: 2:34

You're an open book is what you're saying.

 

Brandy Muse: 2:36

But I'm sure there's something you don't know. I can actually write backwards. I can do mirror writing. So if I write something and you hold up to a mirror, it looks perfect. I can do it in cursive or in print.

 

David Turetsky: 2:45

Wow!

 

Brandy Muse: 2:46

I was really bored in middle school, so it taught myself how to do that.

 

Dwight Brown: 2:51

I was going to ask, is that something that just naturally happened, or you just developed that as a skill?

 

Brandy Muse: 2:57

I chose to develop it, but I don't know why. Save for the fact that I just didn't have much else to do when I was in junior high. So I decided to learn, and it was easy for me.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:09

I'm just picturing that thought coming up, hey, I think I learned her right backwards today!

 

David Turetsky: 3:14

Well, dude, she's in class. She's bored. She's got a pen and a paper. You know, other people doodled Brandy, made use of it. And now are you, you know, seconded to the CIA to, like, make secret messages for, uh, for spies, or?

 

Brandy Muse: 3:31

Yeah, something like that. I mean, it does actually come in handy occasionally, you know, like, if someone needs to write something on a window and you have to see it from the other side, it's actually pretty cool on the rare occasion where my talent comes in handy.

 

David Turetsky: 3:45

Therehere you go. Well. So our topic for today was going to be leveraging L and D for organizational sustainability and growth. But along the way, what happened was a quick story while we're giving you the topic, I think one day one of us, it may have been me, had said, I don't think I'm in the mental space today.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:05

All three of us!

 

David Turetsky: 4:06

Oh yeah, I think it's true. I think it was all three of us. You're right. Dwight, and so one of the things that we realized is maybe it's better instead of talking about the L and D, which will probably bring you back, Brandy, to talk about that other topic, but we've been talking a lot about, how do you bring your authentic self to work? And one of the ways in which you have to be able to be cognizant of is, how am I feeling today? And as I said at the beginning of the podcast, all of us ask, how are you doing? But I don't know necessarily, if we're ready to get the response that we normally do. So today, we're going to be talking about moving from mental health awareness to mental health action, both at home and at work, and beginning with Brandy's personal story of her family's mental health journey. And the disclaimer that we wanted to put on today's program is we are going to be talking about potentially triggering conversations around suicide, self harm, and potentially dabble into domestic violence discussions. So if that might be something that might trigger you, please, we won't take offense if you don't listen to the rest of the podcast, but we wanted to make sure you're aware of that. So Brandy, our first question is, can you give us a little bit about the work you do, how you got here, and how mental health has become really one of your key passions in life?

 

Brandy Muse: 5:35

Yeah. So as I said, I'm a learning experience designer, which basically means I assess business needs and I find knowledge gaps, and then can build training for it, if there's a knowledge gap that requires training. But formerly I was a teacher, I was with the family, and I had a husband and kids. So my husband, Eli, worked mainly with the military and the government for a whole lot of years, and was also very mentally ill for a whole lot of years. This was sort of our life from the time we were kind of children, we got married at 18, so it's kind of all we knew in our marriage. And so it unfortunately was a bit normal and a bit miserable for for all of us. But work never knew, like his co workers, his supervisors, there was just really no awareness of his mental illness at work. It actually didn't hinder him from going to work or from doing his job well a great deal of the time. And so in some ways it's great he could do that, but it also created this huge disconnect between his work life and then our home life and our community life. It was very isolating. And unfortunately, while he could kind of hold it together at work, it ended up being really abusive at home, or there was a lot of emotional and verbal abuse for a whole lot of years. It's very, very difficult. And so we had this sort of cognitive dissonance going on, and he never, I mean, I did suggest multiple times, hey, can you maybe get some help? Can we get some help? And I think, you know, he was maybe afraid at that time to do so, but I know there was also a big concern with work. He would tell me that I can't do that because of my work. I work with guns all day. What are they going to think? You know, because that was part of his job. He was a small arms instructor. And

 

David Turetsky: 7:23

Right.

 

Brandy Muse: 7:23

I knew him, and he knew him, and I'm still confident like he, that would not have the problem, but he is. He was still concerned about that, that it would be seen as a black mark on his record, and it would maybe result in getting discharged or something like that.

 

David Turetsky: 7:40

Brandy, what are we talking about time frames? What years are we talking about for that?

 

Brandy Muse: 7:44

So we married in'99 and then he joined the military in, I think the following year, in 2000. And so during, between the year 2000 to the year, I think around 2014 actually, first he was military, and then he left the military, but did government work, and then did contracting work, and it all kind of felt the same, felt like we were dealing with the same entity. And the culture there, well, there's some great people there, it really wasn't the kind of culture that you want to go in and say, Hey, I really need help. Evenven though there was some progress there, and we were starting to have some awareness, even in the military, of, hey, this is important, especially with PTSD and combat trauma and things like that. That wasn't really his issue. It wasn't so much combat trauma. It was more things that had happened previous to that, genetic things, just consistent, chronic mental illness.

 

David Turetsky: 8:35

I'm sorry, they didn't do any? When he joined they didn't do any testing for things like that to make sure that, you know he's gonna be working with guns, that?

 

Brandy Muse: 8:43

Actually, no, actually no. There may have been, I think, since he did work with special forces for quite a bit of the time, I think there were some light touch, preliminary things, but I don't think there was a lot of official let's bring you in and give you a psych eval. He didn't have to do this sorts of work where they would really deliberately clamp down on that or really assess that, because there are definitely jobs like that. But even though he was around guns all day, even though he was around Special Forces and was adjacent to some important missions and things like that, it was never something that he was directly involved in a way where he would need a psychiatric evaluation. And I think if he had the opportunity to do that, he would shy away from it, because he knew it may not be favorable for him.

 

David Turetsky: 9:29

Even if it was mandatory?

 

Brandy Muse: 9:30

If it was mandatory, he would. Butut nothing was ever mandatory as far as, let's go get you psychiatrically, psychiatrically evaluated. And then also, he didn't have something that was

 

David Turetsky: 9:38

Wow. super diagnosable, that was very easy to pinpoint. He was not schizophrenic. He was not bipolar. There are some things Right.

 

Brandy Muse: 9:48

Or you have an anger problem. But no one ever that are just more easily identifiable. When it did come out of work, when he did have some sort of issue at work, it was. It did happen! Throughout those 15 16 years he did almost get discharged once, almost got fired once, and then actually did get fired once, and it was related to his mental health, but no one saw it that way. They saw it as you're being insubordinate, you know? stepped up and said, Hey, do you need some help here? So unfortunately, that was the reality.

 

Dwight Brown: 10:22

And that's the thing about mental health, is that oftentimes it, it can be hidden for periods of time and different contexts, at least to some extent. You know, I think that's part of the, part of the mental illness is, is being able to be a little bit of a chameleon. And some people, you know, their mental illness is so severe that they they just don't have the capacity to have that sort of property but, but a lot of people do. And yet the mental illness is still very real.

 

Brandy Muse: 10:57

Right. Yeah. And I think it's sad that when you can hide it, you do! You know it's not something that

 

Dwight Brown: 11:03

Right!

 

Brandy Muse: 11:03

you usually bring into, especially a military environment, and have it be okay or understood. Because in my husband's case, he could do his job very well. The danger wasn't in him being violent. The danger was in other places, and it came out at home, unfortunately.

 

David Turetsky: 11:21

I think one of the things that we're dealing with today when it comes to this exact issue is workplace violence is more prevalent because those things which now they're less taboo to discuss. Sometimes, as you say, because they're so hidden or because they're undiagnosable, we don't have the, I guess you could say, the fortitude to step up and ask those people, is there something I can do to help you? Is there something that we can suggest? Can we can, you know, as I'm talking about as HR professionals as well as leaders,

 

Brandy Muse: 12:01

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 12:02

to be able to see something and then say something, whether it's to the person or to our HR team, in order to head off what could be something rather dramatic in someone?

 

Brandy Muse: 12:17

Yeah, I totally agree. I think we don't have the right kind of training for leadership to be able to not only recognize that but respond properly to something like that. And our business structures and cultures don't help either, because we have to sort of cram this whole mental health intervention thing into a structure that isn't really effective at handling mental health very well. So I think we do struggle there. So military life was difficult for that reason. But then he left that and went to Afghanistan for a year and came back. And even whenever you have a well adjusted, healthy family, it can be really difficult to have somebody who's been gone for a year come back into the home. And so he had a really hard time with that. So the following about 2014 to 2016 were super, super rough. His mental health deteriorated pretty badly. He actually started to go in and out of work. He would get a job and then quit, and then get a job and quit because of the mental health pressures, and then mounting financial pressures because of that, still feeling like he couldn't really address his mental health. And then finally, though he got a great job end of 2015 that only lasted a couple months, though, because, well, I hoped it would be a stabilizing force for us. Things had gotten so bad that I had said, hey, something really needs to change, or our family needs to change, and we were trying to deal with that. I had stepped out and actually decided to stay with a friend for a little bit. And a few days into that, he called me up, and he decided he wanted to end his life. So he was saying goodbye, and I tried to talk him down from that, but unfortunately, that didn't work, and he died by suicide in January of 2016. So yeah, understandably that threw our world upside down for the kids and I, and I think it's really sad that he wasn't able to get the help that he needed. And I don't think it's the fault of his workplace, but I do think it would have helped us more along the way, those 16 years of having a mental illness, if he felt able and safe and supported in that journey.

 

David Turetsky: 14:25

I think all of us have had people in our lives who have discussed this or who had thought about it and reached out for help, but there are so many who don't. And my father's best friend probably in his 50s, passed away by suicide, and it was in a small town in upstate New York, and he was a pillar of the community. And everybody kind of said, how could he do this? He has a beautiful wife, he's got great kids, they're in college, one's about to graduate. How could he do this? Instead of asking the question of, what could we have done? Or what could he have done? Or, you know, how did the system or how, how did the people around him not see it? And so there was a lot of misunderstanding. And this is, again, this is probably back in the the 90s, so it was a different time.

 

Brandy Muse: 15:24

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 15:25

But I think each of us has our own story about how this this challenges us.

 

Brandy Muse: 15:29

For sure, yeah, unfortunately, I feel like most of us can point to a situation where we've been affected by suicide. What's encouraging, though, is that we're much more able to talk about it, and I think it helps us find support to pick up the pieces and help each other, and we've gotten a greater understanding of what people are going through when they end up in that space.

 

David Turetsky: 15:55

Right.

 

Brandy Muse: 15:55

And it's not so much people being selfish, really. It's more about the level of pain inside of them is so great that it crowds everything else out, and the trick is to try to stay out of that space. It's like you're in a black box and you can't get out, and there's no other option, and that's what it feels like when you're in that space. But if you're able to keep yourself from getting in that box, that will, that will be what prevents suicide, more than anything. To have those interventions, both at work and at home, and not just have awareness, but have action that will help us stay out of that space.

 

Dwight Brown: 16:40

There's so much stigma that goes with mental health issues, mental illness. And you know, you see it over and over again, where that stigma ends up being the block that keeps people from getting the help they need. And I think the other, I think the other thing to acknowledge is that when you do have mental illness, or you are going through a mental health issue, oftentimes the last one to know is you. And so it also begs the question of, how do, how do you best get somebody help when they can't see it themselves, or at least don't, they can't acknowledge it, you know? And and I, I think that people have been wrestling with that for years. And so you take that to the workplace, and how do we support people in the workplace? How do we help people to be able to see what we're seeing? How do we help them to get the help that they need? I don't know the answer that to tell you the truth.

 

David Turetsky: 17:52

Right.

 

Brandy Muse: 17:52

Yeah, some things don't have good answers, you know. So we can't just have a pat answer for everything. But I

 

Dwight Brown: 17:58

Right. also think that there are a lot of things we can do that we're

 

Brandy Muse: 18:02

So we have these benefits that are placed on top not doing. So mental health awareness is something that's big now, I'm really grateful for that! We talk about it all the time in regular life and in the workplace, but I think our awareness is really loud, but our struggles are staying quiet. I think when it comes to us wanting to help others, we have a real desire to do that, but when it's us ourselves that have a problem, that's when the rubber really meets the road. That's when we really need to have psychological safety at our workplace, or we have to feel like we're going to be heard, or like we're not going to be seen as a burden. And I think it's just a lot harder when it's us, and we need bridges that are going to connect that awareness and structures in place that will help us get from, yeah, we're aware of mental health, and you should always get help to be able to actually take action. I think that the structure and the culture in our business, business landscape right now is still really geared towards... it's still really geared towards people having to put themselves aside to get the task done. Like we know that mental health is important, but instead of changing our structure, we just kind of put benefits on top of it, you know? of these structures that act more as a band aid. So if we have bereavement leave, say, I really appreciate bereavement leave! But whenever I saw that, I found out that most companies have the sort of standard 40 hours of bereavement leave. I honestly I had to laugh. I was like, are you kidding? Like, who made this rule? Have they ever lost anyone? You know? Because that is just really not enough. And I think it would be great if we didn't have to put a static number on it and say, well, here's your 40 hours, and instead have it be something that's situational. And I think we can just do better than that anyway, like we have parental leave that extends well beyond that. So I know that we can do better with our policies. But I think if we train leaders to recognize different situations, what's needed in different situations, be able to gauge the mental health of the people on their team, then they'd be able to say, okay, maybe you need more than 40 hours of bereavement leave. But some people may not need any of that, or only need a portion of that. These things are highly situational, so situational, we can't just turn it into the mechanistic structure of having this machine of a business where the priority of getting tasks done is and productivity is greater than the mental health of our people.

 

David Turetsky: 20:46

I think when it comes to things like bereavement leave, those are always, as a leader I see those always as guidelines. I've never treated them as a rule, and I've always given whatever a person needs in terms of space and time, they're not going to heal right away, certainly not within 40 hours! But there's also no time frame available to us to be able to give them. And so I've always told people, take what you need and don't feel bad about it. Don't worry about us. Don't put extra stress on you.

 

Brandy Muse: 21:22

for people to reveal that or ask for that, and is it possible? Like, are they already so overworked and have too many tasks that, you know, they're not able able to even take time for therapy, much less time off, you know?

 

David Turetsky: 21:40

Yeah, but we've talked about that, Brandy, on this podcast at least, at least a few times of there's got to be a difference between W and L. And L isn't just what's left over from W out of 24 hours, meaning your work time versus your leisure time. It's not a normal equation. It's not easy, it's not linear, certainly. And so especially in the way in which

 

Brandy Muse: 21:59

Yeah,eah. we work today, where your phone's always with you, and you could take your email or whatever, especially for more professional jobs or some support jobs that can be outside the office, having that time to separate yourself and literally separate yourself, turn your phone off, turn your access off. Yeah, it's not easy. And yeah, we all stress about that. But in these circumstances, you've got to, right? I mean, you've, you've just got to be able to separate the two things. Absolutely! Like times like grief or mental health crises really highlight the need for that. But that need is actually there all the time. We need to be able to turn off and be human apart from work and have that separation. But I also think that companies and workplaces need to realize like, if we're going to ask people to bring their whole selves to work, we need to understand that they are embodied creatures that have mental health at work. I think what we tend to be because of the way that we're structured in business, and we'll separate people into these parts. Like, here's your work self and here's your home self, and, oh, you need mental health benefits. Here's some mental health benefits for your home self, you know, because we can't integrate that with work, you know, how would we do that? When, really, if we're able to change, like, reverse that lens and kind of put people in whole humans first, then we can find ways to honor the fact they have mental health issues within their workplace and during that eight hours, or however long that they're that they're present at work, and integrate some of those benefits into the workplace. I think that would be, that would be the smart thing to do.

 

Announcer: 23:42

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David Turetsky: 23:53

So let's get to that as part of the second question. So how do you see that happening in the workplace? How do you see us approaching this differently now, where you can look at mental health in the context of work and say, you know, you've got to take some time. You know, it's not like and I'm not talking about having a room where you can go and sit in silence and kind of collect yourself, although we've seen that happen at some next generation work centers. What's the answer? How do you how do you bring your authentic self to work and be able to have time to be a human at work?

 

Brandy Muse: 24:32

Well, I think the real answer is that it's a long game, and it involves kind of turning the Titanic of the way we see business and the culture that we have in business, right? I think ideally that our structures would be more flexible, you know, flexible enough to honor and move with what people actually need. And part of that, I think, could be, and this is actually something that's happening on the ground at a lot of places, bringing in therapists and treatment modalities on site for people who are on site and to for people to go to at any time, and these people walking around the building, it just normalizes mental health. It shows everybody that the company values this beyond just giving them a benefits Band Aid, and wants them to really integrate good mental

 

David Turetsky: 25:17

Right. health within the tasks at work, because if we just give them a benefit, but then they have to go back to a toxic workplace. It's kind of like, what good is that? But I think too, that having having therapists on site could help with not just individual therapies separate from work, and for someone to go and talk about work, which is great, but also, let's bring a therapist in on the team. Let's bring it into a difficult situation, or into some co workers that are having issues, or if there's a supervisor that needs some help. I think that we can integrate it that way, while having appropriate boundaries, of course, to make sure there's confidentiality and all of that, that would be something we need to learn to do well. But that would, I think that would be a huge game changer. Well, you said something about next generation workplaces I think it ist's funny because having therapists and treatment modalities on site, it just reminds me of, do you remember that show, Star Trek Next Generation? Did you ever see that?

 

David Turetsky: 26:16

Oh sure!

 

Brandy Muse: 26:17

I love that show. Isn't my favorite show as a kid. I absolutely love Deanna Troy, like I wanted to be her when I grew up.

 

David Turetsky: 26:23

Right!

 

Brandy Muse: 26:24

She was probably the only role model I could point to as a child and say, I want to be that! And because she was a counselor, she's a therapist, and she's in the middle of the workplace, like walking around asking people if they want to talk, you know, while they're fighting aliens, you know. And so we're a long way from that. Obviously, we're not in a cashless society with a holodeck or anything like that, you know. Wouldn't it be nice? But she was also, she was in the middle of the action, making decisions, and she was with the captain, and it was just really cool to see how that was integrated into what I now see as a work situation. So, yeah, we're not, we're not there yet, but I think that there are still some really good things we can do right now.

 

David Turetsky: 27:04

So it's a great example of exactly where I was going to go with my comment Brandy, which is that she was an empath.

 

Brandy Muse: 27:10

Oh yeah!

 

David Turetsky: 27:11

She was also their HR person.

 

Brandy Muse: 27:13

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 27:13

She was literally their HR person. So what we've asked people to do in HR is to literally be an Off The Record counselor like Deanna Troy, and that's not their best, that's not their skill set, nor is it the reality of what they should have been doing or should be doing. This is for all of your HR generalists out there, you are not the mental health professional at your work, unless you actually are a certified mental health professional, and that's your job. You should not be listening to people's problems, being able to deal with their mental health issues. That is not your job! What you're talking about, Brandy, is a real mental health professional,

 

Brandy Muse: 28:01

Absolutely.

 

David Turetsky: 28:01

who comes on site, who listens to people in a HIPAA environment, right? In a regulatory, regulatory within the rules, I mean, and doing what's best for both the employee and the employer, which is to listen and support and then make, probably make recommendations to the employee, right?

 

Brandy Muse: 28:22

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, you bring up a good point. HR, professionals are not counselors, and you'd have to have, like, great boundaries, HIPAA would apply, all of that. But I think, you know, even the fact that you need to say that shows that there might be a need for such a thing, you know what I mean? There really might be a need for that. So I think it'd be really cool if we could move that direction.

 

David Turetsky: 28:39

There always was though, Brandy! I mean, I remember back to when I was starting work in the in the 80s, and, you know, if I had a problem, I went to the HR person, and I'd sit down in their office and they'd say, David, what's going on? You know, like, like, as if I'm going into a psychiatrist office and I'm sitting on this couch, and he goes, tell me what's going on. Tell me how you're feeling right now. You're you're not my psychiatrist, you're not my psychologist. I'm not sitting, I'm not gonna lie down.

 

Dwight Brown: 29:07

Don't ask me that!

 

David Turetsky: 29:07

Exactly, but dude, dude, I was a 23 year old kid coming out of college. I was really depressed because I had gotten, you know, I'd been living with, you know, my my friends at my my college fraternity, and then I graduated, and they were all gone, and so I was a little depressed from that, and then I got into a really stressful work environment. So well of course, I'm going to be depressed! But I mean, that's the reason why this is so important, is it's not your HR person and it's not your boss, you're talking about somebody completely different.

 

Brandy Muse: 29:41

Yeah, and what an awkward position to be in too. You're in front of an HR person who works for the company. They don't work for you, and it's hard to know what can you even say in that situation? How safe is it? You know?

 

Dwight Brown: 29:54

But I think that really brings up a good, a good and very important point, and that's the psychological safety aspect of things and where you can go to get psychological safety at work. And honestly, having been in multiple different work environments, there are a lot of them where there is no psychological safety. There's you just, you've got no outlet except for maybe something outside of work and and even even your HR person, they may have a say in hiring and firing decisions, and they may have a say that something that they heard you tell them when they asked you, how are you feeling all of

 

David Turetsky: 30:33

right a sudden, that's going to be used against you. And that's a tough balance to strike and how, you know, I think one of the things that organizations have to wrestle with and hit head on is, how do we create that safe space there? How do we give people a sense of psychological safety to be themselves and to also be able to bring their mental health issues to work and be supported in that?

 

Brandy Muse: 31:02

Yeah, for sure. I think that a good place to start is just gauging the state of the mental health at your organization. I mean, how many orgs do you know that actually will take the time to truly survey anonymously, what, what do you need here at work, and then to prove it with the right benefits, to listen. You know?

 

David Turetsky: 31:25

Well, we do have ERGs, right? And the employee resource groups have been put in place to listen to people and to provide anonymous feedback in a way of being able to be a safe space for people, especially the mental health ERGs, right? I mean, that's a step forward, right?

 

Brandy Muse: 31:44

It's definitely a step forward. Where I'm working right now, at Children's Hospital in Colorado, our mental health benefits and resource groups are actually beyond anything I've ever seen. It's stellar. We do a fantastic job, which we really need to, because we have a whole lot of staff taking care of really sick kids all day, every day, and so we have a really, really robust mental health resources. But our resource group, I'm part of that. I help run some of that, and they are fantastic. I have a good story about that. I when I first joined, first went to this resource group. I gave a little presentation on who I am, why I'm here, shared a little of this story that I shared with you, and at the end of it, the person who the company has hired to make sure that these groups are effective, she asked me, she said, What can we do for people like you who are going through something like this? What resources do you need? What are we missing? What can we do better? And that blew me away. What a great question, and then to be heard, not just to know that other people are going to get resources that they might need because of what I say, but that my story was heard and listened to, and somebody wants to allow me to have a better work experience because of it.

 

David Turetsky: 32:59

That engagement right there, that interaction probably made you, if not, an employee for life, at least it strengthened that bond so much!

 

Brandy Muse: 33:11

Yeah, well, it showed me that I was valued as a person above what I was doing at my job.

 

David Turetsky: 33:18

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/HRDLconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. So Brandy, how do we recognize and change what might seem like a really hard thing, change cultural norms around mental health with respect to work? How do we how do we make progress?

 

Brandy Muse: 33:57

Well, like I said, it's a long game. It's kind of like turning the Titanic, right? But I think we can each start by changing our own ideas of where we find our worth, what work is for. Because in American culture and a lot of cultures, our idea of work is intricately tied with our ability to make money, and that determines our value.

 

David Turetsky: 34:21

Right.

 

Brandy Muse: 34:22

And we all know that that's not true, but we equate worth with work, so it's so ingrained in our culture. So my kids, oh, we have three kids, and all of them have their own special mental health issues. For a long time, we've spent a long time trying to get out of the woods from what is happening in that family. And they have their own inherent struggles. They have their own genetic and otherwise mental health issues, and because of that, they can't work normal jobs. Actually, none of them are currently fully supporting themselves, and they're all adults at this point technically. Two of them live with me and my daughter, Emily feels so bad about that. She feels like, oh, I'm a burden, and she feels kind of useless. And I have to remind her, Hey, you guys, where do we get our worth? Is it being able to go to a job consistently 40 hours a week and do something for a company? Is that really what gives us value? Because now she's able to bring so much light to my life. But a few years ago, she had issues with self harm. She had her own suicidal tendencies. She was addicted to meth, she had an eating disorder. She was there was a lot of self harm, and I look at her now, and she has been free from all of that for over a year! And I feel like she has climbed a higher mountain than most of us will ever have to face, and she feels bad because she can't hold a job at a pizza place? You know? She feels worthless because of that? I think that really betrays a pretty messed up belief in our culture that says we're not worth much if we can't make money, if we can't support ourselves. And I think

 

David Turetsky: 36:13

Yeah

 

Brandy Muse: 36:13

that if we can change that lens, yeah, yeah, that will be a good start. Just step back and examine, where do you where do you think your worth is? Because it's really not, it's really not in how much we can sacrifice our mental health on the alter of American productivity, you know, like, that's that's not where it's at.

 

David Turetsky: 36:33

Yeah, there's a lot of things broken in our society, one of which is the, the way in which we look at, as you say, and value people's contribution beyond just their job and beyond just their pay. Unfortunately, in the political and social environment we're in, you know, there's a lot of rhetoric that goes around about, well, you know, they have problems, and therefore I have to pay for it. Which is obviously horse crap, but it also betrays the fact that everybody struggles with something.

 

Brandy Muse: 37:05

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 37:06

Whether it's your child or my child, I have children who have those mental challenges as well. I have mental challenges as well! Let's not cast, you know, cast aspersions here. Everybody has them, but we need to stop pointing fingers and poking at people and start wrapping our arms around them and realizing that everybody has inherent value, and just because you're not the CEO of a company doesn't mean you're not worth something.

 

Brandy Muse: 37:37

Right! Yeah, who says that being the CEO is the pinnacle? When did we decide that? You know?

 

David Turetsky: 37:43

I think the CEO said that?

 

Brandy Muse: 37:45

Yeah, I think they said that!

 

Dwight Brown: 37:47

Yeah.

 

Brandy Muse: 37:48

But why do we believe them?

 

David Turetsky: 37:50

Well, everybody envies the person at the top, because they believe that once you get there, you've made it, and you don't have to worry anymore about stuff. When it doesn't matter what altitude you're at, the air is thinner actually at the top than it is down, down near the bottom, right. So, you know, we always say grass is never, is always greener and never really is.

 

Brandy Muse: 38:15

Right or like at the end of life, we're more having relationships is so much more important than what we've accomplished for a faceless company, and yet we still kind of follow that path subconsciously because it's so ingrained. But I think like those that can't get past like you're saying Dwight, some people can't hide their mental illness, or they can't manage that and go to work at the same time. That's just the reality society has always had those people. And if you've ever had the privilege of caring for someone disabled like that, you realize what kind of an inherent amazing light can shine from people like that when they don't have anything else to offer. It's this, it's this really interesting paradox. I have the great privilege of caring for my son, who's autistic. He's disabled in a way where he won't ever have a normal job. And I've learned so much about myself and about human worth by being able to raise him, by being able to, you know, see what, what is really valuable when it comes to who a human is, like you're born with that. So if you can't go to work, or if you're worried about getting all the tasks done or not able to climb a ladder that has absolutely nothing to do with what you can contribute to society. Because even people who we don't think have anything contribute, it's like they are some of the most profoundly precious people, because you're born with worth, no, no one can take that away from you. You know?

 

David Turetsky: 39:57

I want to end it on that note, because Brandy, I don't think anybody could say it better, and I appreciate you being here. Dwight, you know, I'm sure you you do, you do too?

 

Dwight Brown: 40:08

Yeah, big time. I was really excited for this topic, uh, when it was coming out, and would love to be able to continue, uh, talking about this, because I think we need to continue talking about this. It's a reality. And all of our workplaces and with all of our friends and family, none of us is untouched by mental health issues in some way or another. So appreciate you being here with with us, Brandy, and especially appreciate your your sharing your story with us, because it really helps to frame things in a very helpful way.

 

Brandy Muse: 40:49

Yeah, so glad I got to have this conversation with you. Thanks for having me on.

 

David Turetsky: 40:53

It's totally our pleasure. And again, I want to echo Dwight's sentiments. Thank you for being brave and using your stories as a way to inspire people to be able to understand how this affects not just you, but but them as well. We're going to have you back again, and maybe we'll talk about learning and development, but in the meantime, thank you so much. Really appreciate you being here.

 

Brandy Muse: 41:18

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me here.

 

David Turetsky: 41:20

And thank you all for listening, take care and please stay safe.

 

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